Augustus was born in [63 B.C.] on September 23, a little before sunrise, in the region of the Palatine called Ad Capita Bubula, where no he has a sacrarium, established a short time after he died. For (as it is recorded in the Acta Senatus ) Caius Laetorius, a young man of patrician origin, in pleading to escape a heavier penalty for adultery because of his youth and origins, pointed out also to the senators that he was the possessor and, as it were, guardian of the place which Divus Augustus first touched at the moment of his birth, and he made his plea as though from his own and personal divinity. It was decreed that that part of the residence be consecrated.
When Caesar returned to the city victorious, he purchased several residences through the agency of procurators, so that he might become less pressed upon; he announced he was intending them for public uses, and he promised he would build a Temple of Apollo and encircling portico(s) . . . .
He raised the Temple of Apollo in that part of the Palatine residence which the haruspices declared was demanded by the god through the blast of a thunderbolt . . . . The colonnades running out from it housed Latin and Greek libr4aries, and in his advanced years he often held meetings of the Senate and the panels of juries in that place.
After the Actian War Augustus gave to the State the Palatium, built according to his order, when it was a private residence.
Upon his return, the Senate voted him countless honors, from which he was to choose himself either to take them all or as many as he wanted; and as submissively as possible, the Senate and People, crowned, led him in procession around to the temples and from the temples away to his home.
The People resolved at this time that a house should be presented to Caesar at public expense; for he had made public property of the place on the Palatine which he had bought for the purpose of erecting a building upon it, and had consecrated it to Apollo after a thunderbolt had descended upon it.
Phoebus has part, another part belongs to Vesta; what is left over from these [Augustus] holds as third proprietor. Stand fast, laurel of the Palatine, stand, house decorated with oak. One house holds three eternal gods.
[Augustus] lived at first next to the Forum Romanum, at the top of the Scala Anularia, in a residence which once belonged to the orator Calvus. Later (he lived) on the Palatine, but still in the modest house of Hortensius, neither remarkably large nor very elaborate in decoration; the porticos were of Alban stone and not lofty, without any marble decorated living rooms or tesselated pavements. He lived in the same cubiculum for forty years or more, winter and summer; he resided in the city in the winter, which was hardly good for his health. If he proposed to conduct some business in private or without interruption, he had a place, private and remote, which he called 'Syracuse' or the 'Technyphion'; he used to go here or to some suburban villa of a freedman. But if he fell ill, he always took refuge in Maecenas' mansion . . . . Such was his dislike of all pretentious country mansions that he went so far as to demolish one built on too lavish a scale by his granddaughter Julia. His own were rather modest, and less remarkable for their statuary and pictures than for their landscape gardening and the rare antiques on display . . . . (73) How simply Augustus' residence was furnished may be deduced by examining the couches and tables still preserved . . . .
JAN 13: The Senate decreed that the Oak Crown should be placed above the door of the residence of Imperator Caesar Augustus because he restored the State to the Roman People.
The Senate never bestowed the laurel upon anyone, nor did anyone desire it given to himself, while part of the citizenship was grieving. In fact, when the crown for saving the life of a fellow citizen, with which the doorposts of the house of Augustus triumph with eternal glory, must be given, it is humble hands which reach out toward the oak.
Augustus gave this [naval] crown to Agrippa, but he himself received the Civic Crown from the whole human race.
That measure, therefore, now failed to pass, and he received no official residence; but since he was Pontifex Maximus and had to live in a public house, he made part of his house public . . . .
When I was holding my thirteenth consulship [ 2 B.C. ], the Senate and the Equestrian Order and the Populus Romanus unanimously named me Pater Patriae, and ordered this to be inscribed in the vestibule of my aedes , and in the Curia Julia, and in the Forum Augustum under the 4-horse chariot which was erected in my honor by senatorial decree.
When his residence on the Palatine burned down, a fund for its rebuilding was started by the veterans, the decuriae, the Tribunes; single persons from every condition of mankind willingly and to the extent that their means permitted contributed their money. [ See Dio 55. 12.4-5 ]
Once when a palm tree pushed its way between the paving stones in front of his residence, he had the palm tree transferred into the compluvium of the Penates, and took great pains to see to it that it grew.
Now when Augustus was growing weary because of old age and bodily weakness, so that he could not attend to the business of all those who needed his attention, though he did continue personally, with his assistants, to investigate judicial cases and to pass judgment, seated on the tribunal in the palace, he entrusted to three ex-consuls the embassies sent to Rome by peoples and kings. These, sitting separately, gave audience to such embassies and made answer to them, except in matters in which the final decision had of necessity to be rendered by the Senate and Augustus.
Hereafter, making the German War his excuse, Augustus asked the Senators not to greet him at his home or feel hurt if he did not continue to join with them in their public meals.
In addition to all these [posthumous honors] Livia held a private festival in [Augustus'] honor for three days en Palatio , and this ceremony is still continued down to the present day by whoever is emperor.
found on the Palatine, between what is called the "Domus Liviae" and the "Domus Augustana": IVLIAE AVGVSTAE
Some judge that Tiberius was born at Fundi . . . but, as other more reliable authors indicate, he was born at Rome, on the Palatine, on November 16.
John Paul Adams, CSUN
john.p.adams@csun.edu